


Take Care

by GrowlGrowl



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 04:18:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11547333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrowlGrowl/pseuds/GrowlGrowl
Summary: Damian knows he's messing this up. He’s messing up his marriage. He’s messing up his father’s death. He’s messing up his last opportunity to say goodbye to the man whose shoes he, as a ten year old, couldn’t wait to fill.





	Take Care

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic in probably 6 years. Although I've been reading fanfic on this site for a few years, I've finally buckled down and written something for it. Hopefully this writing train keeps going.

Damian knew Tim hadn’t read the reports when he got home and found the folder undisturbed on the Batcave console. He huffs before changing out of the Batsuit and into sweats.

Upstairs his husband is snoring, fully clothed, on top of their bedsheets. Still annoyed, Damian doesn’t take much care in how he tosses the duvet aside so he can slide into bed. He sometimes crawls in with the utmost skill in order to avoid waking Tim. Today, he doesn’t have the patience and Tim groans when the blanket slaps his arm and chin.

“Damian?” he yawns.

“You didn’t read the files,” says Damian.

“It was a rough day.” Tim rolls to face him and it is then he noticed the bruise under Tim’s left cheek. Damian immediately feels guilty for waking him up in such a childish manner.

“Father hit you again?” The bruise is light. Lucky for Tim, Damian’s father hadn’t nearly the amount of strength he used to possess. However, Bruce’s muscle memory remains intact so he still has the skill to sneak a hit every once in a while when he gets too confused. Then he’ll get more confused at having no memory of where he’d learned how to do that. This was the reason – that and Bruce’s rare moments of clarity where he’ll talk about Batman – which made it impossible for them to employ any hospice workers. So, Tim became Bruce’s primary caregiver. The marks usually went away in a day or two.

Tim doesn’t answer Damian. Instead, he closes his eyes and nuzzles the palm that cups his face. He starts kissing Damian’s wrist and sliding into his lap to straddle him.

Tim’s lips feel so soft against his chapped ones that dried out in the autumn Gotham night. When they first started being intimate, Tim would make fun of how Damian kissed – lips pressed hard and rough, leaving no room for finesse. Now, Tim’s taken to kissing like that. As if he needs the stability of Damian’s larger, muscular form to keep him from slipping away.

“Can we…?” says Tim as he breaks apart to kiss along his jaw, gyrating his ass against Damian’s cock. “Lube?”

“I-,” Damian wants to say yes (he hadn’t penetrated his husband in over a month) but even as Tim humps his lap he feels his eyes blink away sleep. His arms strain to lift himself into a sitting position. He hadn’t fucked Tim in a month but he also hadn’t slept well in three days. “I’m tired, beloved.”

Tim looks disappointed but he’s been looking disappointed a lot lately so it just doesn’t faze Damian like it used to. So Tim unbuttons his pants and lowers Damian’s sweatpants just enough to get their cocks out. He uses the aloe vera lotion on the nightstand – the stuff he puts on three times a day to combat the case of dry hands he gets from washing his hands so often – to slick them up.

Tim is quick and efficient. Damian’s kind of glad he didn’t spend all that time prepping Tim as the younger comes within a minute. Maybe it’s been longer than a month, now that he considers it... Tim takes a bit longer to orgasm so Damian pets his hips and whispers in his ear, “You’re so good, beloved. That’s it. Come for me.” He alternates between tugging on Tim’s earlobe with his teeth and speaking. He has to say “come for me” four times before Tim actually does.

It’s Tim who gets up to retrieve a washcloth to clean up. It’s Tim who pulls up both of their pants as Damian closes his eyes. For a moment Damian thinks Tim might have said “goodnight,” but he knows responding would require energy that might disturb his steady drift toward sleep so he doesn’t say it back.

*

Tim always gets up earlier than Damian so he can check in on Bruce and prepare breakfast. Then, he goes to his old bedroom where he had set up an office to deal with WE paperwork, phone calls, teleconferences, quarter planning…

In truth, he actually misses going into the office every day. He misses driving from his and Damian’s penthouse in the city to chat up coworkers and bitch about investors. But since Bruce got sick, he and Damian moved into the manor and Tim took a semi-leave from WE. His workload was cut in half and he only needed to go in maybe once every couple weeks for incredibly important meetings. Meetings that he rushes home from so he can check to make sure Damian got up early enough to give Bruce his medication and walk him to the bathroom.

He was absolutely livid a couple months ago when he came home from a three-hour-long meeting that should have only lasted half an hour to find Bruce sitting in yellow sheets. He really had it into Damian after that.

Although Damian tried to turn it around on him forgetting his wedding band that morning. Tim had stopped wearing his wedding band because it was inconvenient to wear it whilst washing his hands several times per day. When Tim used to go to work every day, he put it on in the morning. Now that he spends all day and night in the manor, he doesn’t even get dressed most days. Let alone put on jewelry. That morning he had been so out-of-practice getting ready that he simply forgot to put it on.

But Damian, being Damian, had to find a way to strike back against Tim’s anger.

“I forgot it, okay? Quit with the jealousy bullshit. It used to be hot when we were in our twenties but now it’s just pathetic.”

“Pathetic to worry about my husband forgetting the symbol of our marriage?”

Tim had had it by that point. He turned around and stormed at Damian. He might be almost a foot shorter but he was all rage, “at least I only forget a stupid ring. You seem to forget we’re married all together! You treat me like a fucking nurse – not a husband. Not an equal. I’m a servant whom you fuck whenever you can manage to get it up – maybe once every couple months.”

That night ended in them having sex for the first time in two months. It seems like the only way Tim can get Damian to fuck him is to lay out all their emotional strife. Damian will do anything to get around that kind of shit. Even screw his husband who has recently taken to staring at his own wrinkles in the mirror, pulling the skin taut with his fingers. Tim doesn’t remember looking like this.  
For a week after that, Damian kissed him on the cheek randomly and brought home daisies. He did the dishes without complaint and even refilled Bruce’s pill box. Although, he filled it wrong and Tim had to redo it. Then things went back to normal.

Some days Tim wonders how he got stuck doing all the caregiver work – watching carefully as Bruce slipped further and further from the man he had once been while Damian got to go to work at WE and be Batman.

For a while, after Bruce had gotten old but before he got sick, Tim and Damian shared the mantel. Tim would do most of the investigative work and Damian would suit up for the combat-heavy nights. Switching off to give the other breaks. It was a dynamic their younger selves would have never imagined to be so successful.

Now, Damian still expects him to read files and organize folders on the computer and do video surveillance all while taking care of Bruce and managing his WE work. Yet Tim hasn’t gotten to wear the suit in eight months.

“Breakfast?” Damian appears from the hallway. Also, Tim cooked.

“Just oatmeal,” says Tim. He pours two packets into a bowl and fills the rest with water.

“You have access to Alfred’s cookbooks, you know,” Damian wraps the tie around his neck and Tim wishes he could strangle him with it.

“You have access to them, too.” Tim watches the microwave count down because sometimes just looking at his husband can fill him with rage. “Same as you have access to your father’s room.”

Damian’s eyes narrow. The microwave beeps. “And what is that supposed to mean exactly?”

Tim exhales heavily and takes his time pouring the oatmeal into three bowls. He pushes two in Damian’s direction. “Eat breakfast with your father.”

His jade eyes moved from the bowls to Tim and then back to the bowls. Tim hands him two spoons and pushes the bowls further until they almost ran off the countertop and into the lap of Damian’s expensive suit. That forces Damian to grab them.

“Go on,” says Tim, focusing on shoveling his oatmeal into his mouth. “I don’t want to look at you.”

“Tt,” scoffs Damian before heading out of the kitchen.

“Don’t forget his pills,” Tim feels obligated to remind him before he rounds the corner.

“What kind of imbecile do you think I am?”

His pace slows as he reaches his father’s bedroom. The room reeks of medication and the act of dying. He stands outside until he feels the oatmeal cool a bit before resolving that if he doesn’t bring his father breakfast, and Tim finds him standing out here, he’d be getting into yet another argument with his husband.

His father is incredibly frail and his skin seems to spill off of his bones. It is marked and pocked. His eyes are unfocused even as he notices his son enter. Damian silently hopes he at least recognizes him as his son.

Lately it’s been a crapshoot in how he’ll respond to Damian’s presence. The first time Bruce looked at Damian and asked why this man was in his house, Damian spent the afternoon punching a training bag until he could suit up and punch criminals. Taking breaks only to sob heavily into the old leather that made him feel ten years old again.

“Father,” says Damian. He goes to the nightstand and pulls out his pill box. Finds the correct date and time of day before putting them in his father’s palm. Bruce looks at them like how he used to look at a particularly hard clue. Damian has to gently lift his hand to his mouth before Bruce realizes that he’s supposed to swallow them.

*

Dick and Jason come around maybe twice a month for a weekend. When Damian and Tim first moved back to the manor, they would take over Bruce’s care so their brothers could have a date night.

That only happened a few times until Damian started going out as Batman on those nights. Sometimes the Red Hood will join him while Tim cries to Dick and tells him about how Damian refuses to confront the fact that his father is dying.

Tim can’t complain to Dick about not being able to Batman anymore since Dick’s missing leg has prevented him from being Nightwing for almost four years now. Although, Tim suspects it wasn’t just the leg that retired the original Robin. Even before the explosion, Dick had been going out less and less. He’d been losing his grip during swings. Twice Jason had to save him when he lost his grapple midair. Dick massaged his palms and fingers when he thought no one was looking. Arthritis.

Dick spends more time sitting next to Bruce during those visits than Damian does in an entire month. He always leaves teary-eyed and he’s taken to saying his final goodbyes every time they leave on Sunday. It doesn’t matter that it’s the same thing over and over again because Bruce forgets what Dick said by dinnertime anyway.

*

Bruce has been getting worse and worse. Earlier that afternoon the doctor told Tim he’d be surprised if Bruce made it to next month.

Damian knew he was in trouble for working late and missing the doctor’s visit so he’d volunteered to make a nice dinner. Well, nicer than the frozen microwave meals they’d been eating. However, he still couldn’t avoid his husband’s ire. Tim had been too exhausted to pick fights but yet another of Damian’s broken promises tipped the scale.

There used to be times where Tim would pick fights with Damian just to initiate a bout of rough sex. Something that was reminiscent of the early years of their relationship before Damian corned Tim with a handful of roses saying, “The idea of you with another is unacceptable to me. Therefore, I propose for our arrangement to become exclusive.” That was over twenty years ago.

Now, the pot of boiling water is in a contest with Tim’s temper. And Damian’s sure tonight isn’t going to end in spooning.

“You know, your dad’s going to die soon,” says Tim as he sits on the countertop on the other side of the kitchen.

“I know that.”

“Really? Because I don’t think you see it. You never even sit with him. He’s going to go sooner than you think and these might well be your last days with him but yet I have to force you to just eating a fucking meal with him.”

“I know very well the condition my father is in.” Damian tries to be a blank wall. If Tim can’t find a way to get under his skin then he might give up.

Tim slips off the countertop. “You’d know a lot more about his condition if you bothered with him once in a while.”

Despite keeping his eyes on the pot this entire time, Damian accidentally lets the water boil over until it sizzles on the stovetop. He turns down the heat. The water on the stove needs to cool before he can wipe it up.

“I’d rather wait until after dinner,” says Damian.

“You’d rather wait until he’s dead and gone to feel anything,” says Tim. He gets down from the countertop (Alfred would’ve been appalled at his new habit of sitting on the tile.) He’s annoyed that Damian has yet to look at him. He’s annoyed that Damian hasn’t looked at him for months. He wants to grab Damian’s face that has yet to show any signs of age and squeeze it until he creates wrinkles out of the folded skin and force his husband to just look at him. “Of course maybe then you’ll finally leave me. You won’t need a nurse then.”

Damian uses the ladle to stir the spaghetti but in the process of taking it out of the boiling water a few drops fall on his wrist. It stings. “What are you going on about?”

“When was the last time you asked me how I was? Or kissed me just to kiss me? Or just do anything a husband is supposed to do. You haven’t even fucked me properly in months. Even when you were fucking everything else up about our relationship at least you used to be able to do that.” 

Another stir of the ladle.

“Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been if I’d’ve stuck with Conner instead of taking pity on you.”

The ladle, filled with boiling water, is thrown across the kitchen. Toward the empty seating area. No water gets on Tim but a spoonful sizzles on Damian’s sweatshirt.

Damian appears in front of him, so close that his body crowds Tim into the countertop. Tim’s lower back aches at the pressure.

“Shut up before I do something I’ll regret.” They’re finally eye-to-eye. Tim’s searching his eyes for the sincerity in that statement but it doesn’t take a detective to find it.

“Well that’s it then,” whispers Tim. “Hit me. Hit me if it’ll make you feel better. Big man you are.”

Damian pants in restraint. His hands clench on either side of his husband on the granite. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Tim this bad since he was a child. The notion that he is still capable of such hatred – toward someone he’d vowed to love and cherish – ashamed him.

He backs off.

“You know,” says Tim. His voice is a lot less cocky than it was a minute ago. Damian has to strain to hear what comes next, “He was a father to me, too.”

“I know.” Damian leans heavily into the stability of the counter. And subsequently, his husband. Damian’s face is nothing but pain as he pants and tries to avoid crying. He knows he’s fucking this up. He’s fucking up his marriage. He’s fucking up his father’s death. He’s fucking up his last opportunity to say goodbye to the man whose shoes he, as a ten year old, couldn’t wait to fill. These last few months he couldn’t help but feel that the boots don’t fit him right. He’s worn those boots for over a decade but now every time he suits up they feel terribly loose.

“I’m sorry.” When Tim apologizes, Damian realizes how long he’s been hunched, shaking, with his face over his husband’s shoulder “I’m just… so sick of this.”

“No. It’s me,” says Damian, choking on the words. It feels as if a giant ball is stuck in his throat and his chest starts hitching with overwhelming sobs. “I’m so sorry, beloved.”  
He lets go of the counter to embrace his husband and they slide down to the floor. Leaning on the cabinets and each other, they cry on the floor of the kitchen for almost an hour.

They end up eating a frozen lasagna anyway because the noodles are mush by the time they get up to turn off the stove.

*

The next day is another bad day. In fact, it’s one in a string of bad days that go on for almost a week. Although, during that week Damian made a concerted effort to randomly kiss his husband. He wraps his arms around Tim’s waist and whispers “you are so beautiful,” as his husband scrutinizes a patch of graying hair in the mirror. He uses Alfred’s cookbook to slap together some halfway decent meals. Even though his father could only stomach a few bites and when Damian pushed him to eat more, he threw the plate at his son’s head.

Despite that, things had been so smooth between him and Tim that when Tim calls Damian at the office midday on a Thursday, instead of instructing his secretary to take a message – Damian answers it.

“He woke up and… he’s in so much pain, Dami. I don’t know what to do.” He knows Tim’s in tears from his sniffles and raw throaty way of speaking.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He speeds through afternoon traffic, cutting people off like an asshole, as he tries to think of what he’ll even say when he gets home. To Tim. To his father. Nothing feels right as he rehearses his final goodbyes to the angry drivers’ middle fingers.

Tim is holding his father’s hand when he gets home. Bruce doesn’t even lift his head up to see who entered his room. Damian doesn’t know if he can.

“I think…” says Tim, his eyes misty as he says the next part very carefully, looking Damian straight in the eyes, “he needs more morphine.”

Damian nods dumbly. His father looks almost gray. Tim’s been packing blankets around his tiny frame. He’d never thought he could ever describe his father as tiny.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m going to call Dick and Jason,” says Tim. “They’ll want to be here.”

Tim leaves the room and Damian replaces him in the chair. He sees his father’s bony hand on the bedspread and knows he’s supposed to take it. It feels ridiculously cold so he cups his hands to try to warm it.

His father wheezes for a bit and Damian knows he’s trying to say something. When Bruce first was diagnosed, he made it a habit to say all the things he’d want to leave them with before his mind deteriorated. It was kind of awkward, really. Here was Bruce finally saying all these emotionally charged things like how he was so proud of them and loved them. He wanted to make it so, when it came down to it, his final words to his sons weren’t disappointing gibberish. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “So remember, even with everything that will happen, I want those to be the words you think of when you think of me.”

So, Damian has very little expectation for the next words to come out of Bruce’s mouth. He just hopes his father gets to say whatever he has building up because right now he’s putting in so much effort to say it that it looks incredibly painful. Even if it is “who are you?” Damian could live with that. He wants whatever will relieve his father of this agonizing burden.

But he doesn’t say “who are you.”

At that moment, Tim walks in with his cellphone in hand. “Jason and-.”

“Look at you,” Bruce manages, addressing both Damian and Tim. The words are slow like he was either cherishing them or struggling with them. “Getting along.”

Damian laughs in that watery way that doesn’t quite reach the eyes but still lightens the chest. Tim pulls up a chair next to them and puts his hand over Damian’s which are over Bruce’s. Any words that Damian prepared are forgotten.

His father goes in and out of consciousness in the next hour. He moans in pain and exhales harsh breaths. Damian counts his inhales and exhales. Sometimes there’s ten whole seconds between them, but he’s hanging on. He’s hanging on for Jason and Dick to get there.

They let themselves into the manor and silently enter Bruce’s room. Tim’s hands shake as he prepares the morphine so Damian takes over for him. He administers it and Bruce goes slack as if the tension in his body is finally released. He’s completely out then.

All four of them sit there for the next hour – watching their mentor’s unconscious body take air and then breathe it back out. Until finally, at some random interval where Damian was staring at a forgotten button underneath the nightstand and not his father’s face, Bruce doesn’t breathe in again.

Damian holds Tim just as Jason holds Dick. They stay put for a while.

And for a second, Damian feels guilty when he realizes his body is letting out a sigh of relief. He stops feeling guilty when he feels Tim against him – the tension leaving Tim’s body with a big sigh of his own.

*

Bruce’s funeral is one of Gotham’s largest events in years. Probably since the Wayne wedding sixteen years ago that the press deemed “a spectacle like no other, if not for the wealth – then for the scandalous nature of the union.” Tim hoped he wouldn’t have to restrain Damian from punching reporters at this event.

Members of the still-surviving superhero community come to pay their respects. Tim is shocked by how old some of them look but then he’s also shocked by how young some of the others look in comparison. Clark and Diana have barely aged and Conner still looks like the kid Tim used to mess around with. It unnerves him because he can’t imagine standing next to him now and not looking like some creep. Tim’s memorized the pattern of his own wrinkles by now. Seeing Conner’s forever-teenaged countenance makes Tim realize how old Damian’s face has actually gotten.

Damian holds his hand through most of the service. Tim has to let go at some point when his grip becomes too tight.

Conner introduces Tim to a few new members of the League who came to pay their respects to one of the founding members. One’s civilian identity is that of a licensed relationship therapist. He gives his number to Tim, saying that he knows grief can be really tough on a marriage. If he wasn’t so right Tim would have socked him in the face. No doubt the therapist's been picking up on the way Damian hovers nearby whenever Tim is talking to Conner.

Later, Tim presents the possibility of counselling even though he's sure Damian overheard the offer at the funeral reception.

“I was hoping that we could go on a trip. We are both in need of some relaxation,” said Damian. “Perhaps St. Martin?” The island where they honeymooned years and years ago.

“How about trip, then counselling?” said Tim as he spun his wedding band back and forth on his finger.

“That sounds agreeable.”


End file.
